That meme never registered as problematic to me (at least by meme standards) but you’re correct.

I always felt it outed its creators as lacking theory of mind; why does a large group of people have different shared beliefs than me? They must lack the ability to think independently like everyone else in my cliquey subculture!

But let's acknowledge the truth that there are plenty of people who really don't think critically. Certainly some people will label others as "not thinking critically" when they really just think differently, but let's agree the former category does exist, and it's not a small population.

But most people do think critically. Have you considered this phenomenon to simply be shared or group cognition (also something nearly everyone experiences), rather than a lack of critical thinking skills?

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about most people thinking critically. I don't have anything other than personal experience to justify my position and a quick Google search wasn't able to turn up any convincing studies.

Group cognition (from a quick skim of a Wikipedia article about it) doesn't seem to justify lack of individual critical thinking though. It seems to be more like a term to describe a process, like "memes" and "idea viruses". It doesn't substitute for individual critical thinking.

Everyone is a person with a story, but living life with that awareness is unnecessarily burdensome. Self-awareness is more important than the awareness of others’ stories.

Obsession with other people’s life stories leads to hero worship and constant comparison with them, making you unhappy because you couldn’t check off as many checkboxes as them. This is another form of unhealthy thinking, the inverse of narcissism.

What is unnecsssry? What is obsession? Any contradiction between self aware and be empathy with your human life live sane time as you.

You can live a life that concern only yourselves. Yes! Life is impermanent, obsessive with oneself and pain is everywhere. As a branch of Buddhism would said.

You can also note if that is so all religion and all givernment can disappear as love thy Neigbour, be empathy and still with the world instead of going to nirvana himself, many governments are bad but anarchy may not be good either.

No one sure what is the best approach for one life. But what you said seems odd.

May those died live in peace now. Let the living continue. We will continue do evil and good thing. Choose. Every seconds of it. That is life. RIP ultimately we all know.

I don't think of the NPC meme as especially harmful. Although I don't propagate this meme, I think it's an interesting way of poking fun at people who truly don't think critically about their opinions and sort of absorb opinions by osmosis from the media. I think a strategy of poking fun at people who don't think critically might be one of several possibly useful ways to change that trend. The NPC meme also seems like a possibly useful way to psychologically deal with the fact that there are many people whose minds simply cannot be changed no matter how rationally you try to explain your perspective.

As with any idea, the danger is in misapplication. For example, if someone simply stops trying to change others' minds when it's really still possible but the NPC meme causes them to ignore that possibility, then it doesn't help improve the world. Or if a misguided individual who doesn't distinguish meme from reality uses it to dehumanize people in their mind, then that's a problem.